Slavoj Zizek on Iran: “Will the cat above the precipice fall down?”

[The following is a guest post from Slavoj Žižek, sent to An und für sich by Ali Alizadeh who writes "Apparently the mainstream media has not shown interest in publishing it. Hope that the blogsphere can counteract their tendency." The piece is copy-right free and you should feel free to republish this on your own blog.]

When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…

In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now?

There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq.

Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% – can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough – they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left.

Opposed as they are, all these versions read the Iranian protests along the axis of Islamic hardliners versus pro-Western liberal reformists, which is why they find it so difficult to locate Mousavi: is he a Western-backed reformer who wants more personal freedom and market economy, or a member of the cleric establishment whose eventual victory would not affect in any serious way the nature of the regime? Such extreme oscillations demonstrate that they all miss the true nature of the protests.

The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption. This return to the roots is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the mode of activity of the crowds: the emphatic unity of the people, their all-encompassing solidarity, creative self-organization, improvising of the ways to articulate protest, the unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.

There are a couple of crucial consequences to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country).

Second, one should draw a clear difference between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi effectively is a reformist, basically proposing the Iranian version of identity politics, promising favors to all particular groups. Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the “return of the repressed” of the Khomeini revolution.

And, last but not least, what this means is that there is a genuine liberating potential in Islam – to find a “good” Islam, one doesn’t have to go back to the 10th century, we have it right here, in front of our eyes.

The future is uncertain – in all probability, those in power will contain the popular explosion, and the cat will not fall into the precipice, but regain ground. However, it will no longer be the same regime, but just one corrupted authoritarian rule among others. Whatever the outcome, it is vitally important to keep in mind that we are witnessing a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If our cynical pragmatism will make us lose the capacity to recognize this emancipatory dimension, then we in the West are effectively entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

Married

Today is the day – I will be married by 6 PM this evening. It is surreal to think that this is happening within twenty-four hours. It was three weeks ago that I realized that the wedding was in three weeks. From six months ago until then I upheld my belief that it was in six months. Now the planning is almost through – it never ends until we drive away from the reception! After the wedding, the honeymoon, and finally the marital bliss should start setting in soon. 

Oh, and yes, I did manage to sneak some Barth into the wedding. On the program I have printed:

‘Love does not question; it gives an answer. Love does not think; it knows. Love does not hesitate; it acts. Love does not fall into raptures; it is ready to undertake responsibilities. Love puts behind it all the Ifs and Buts, all the conditions, reservations, obscurities and uncertainties that may arise between a man and a woman. Love is not only affinity and attraction; it is union. Love makes these two persons indispensable to each other. Love compels them to be with each other’. – Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4

Wish us luck! I’ll write in a week. Cheers. 

Jürgen Moltmann on new hope in Jesus’ resurrection

This passage was particularly profound, especially as I realize that I am helping turn the gears that crush many caught up inside: 

The message of the new righteousness which eschatological faith brings into the world says that in fact the executioners will not finally triumph over their victims. It also says that in the end the victims will not triumph over their executioners. The one will triumph who first died for the victims and then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through the vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind with a new humanity. Only where righteousness becomes creative and creates right both for the lawless and for those outside the law, only where creative love changes what is hateful and deserving of hate, only where the new man is born who is neither oppressed nor oppresses others, can one speak of the true revolution of righteousness and of the righteousness of God. 

(Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 178)

My most basic question, as I realize that I have to live differently, is, “What now?” The question feels like one Paul might like to answer: “If the cycle of oppression is going to be broken and both self-righteous (me) will be justified along with the oppressed and destroyed, why should I do anything differently?” He might say something like “Because the grace of God abounds!”

The law of righteousness has been overcome by the law of grace. God is graceful to men – not “repent and be forgiven,” but “you are forgiven, now turn away and be transformed.” But how do I live in light of the Easter faith when my life is mostly comfortable? How can I live in the hope of resurrection-life rather than just having a set of beliefs and hoping all will be made right in the end, and operating in mode of unprincipled self-preservation as a result?

A short review of Karl Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline

 I finally finished this book, my first by Barth – it took me months to read this short (155 pages) series of lectures delivered to a group of dedicated students at Kurfürsten Schloss in Bonn in 1959. Despite the fact that each section is at most about five pages, Barth is deceptively easy to read and thus I spent a great deal of time poring over what had been transcribed in each lecture. He seemingly wastes no words, hardly repeats himself and is almost never recorded delivering anything but the highest level of discourse. Many do not write as clearly as Barth spoke extemporaneously.

In particular, the three chapters on the structure of faith (Faith as Trust, Faith as Knowledge, and Faith as Confession) are particularly useful. The contrast between faith as trust and as knowledge was and is still difficult for me to totally understand in the context of this discussion. If reading the chapter on trust, one might accuse Barth (as some have) of fideism, but then taken as a pill with the chapter on knowledge, the waters are muddied. Knowledge rightly understood, knowledge as wisdom or Sophia rather that Scientia, Barth argues, is the sort of Christian knowledge that is related to faith (and encompasses the entire existence of man). Finally the church’s job, in faith, is to confess its faith. It must proclaim, even in ‘unedifying language’ familiar to those ‘out there’. Christian faith does not happen in a ’snail’s shell’ or in a comfortable dualism. Confession is not a weak thing that happens weekly in a church service, but in our every involvement outside of life Barth calls the Christian to confess in love, in ways that ‘Mr. Everyman’ can understand. To paraphrase St. Francis, spread the Gospel, and use words only if necessary. 

By far the most moving chapter is on the coming judgment of Christ. Judgment never seems to be a fun topic, but in this case Barth points us to Christ as the one who will create order and restore what has been destroyed. (The particular university was apparently in near ruins in the post-war landscape, perhaps making this a particularly poignant point for many students as well as Barth himself). At judgment all tears will be wiped away. It won’t be a question of our faith or lack of faith – but it will be the point where “it is finished” comes into full view. Christ has done his work on earth, which holds for all, Christian and non-Christian alike. An amazing lecture that truly challenges any sort of knee-jerk reaction against Christ the Judge. 

This was for me a book to savor and delight in, and it is one that I shall revisit again and again throughout my life.

Are you aware that many sitting in this class are not Christians?

At this point I should like, in passing, to answer a question which has been put to me several times during these weeks: ‘Are you not aware that many are sitting in this class who are not Christians?’ I have always laughed and said: ‘That makes no difference to me.’ It would be quite dreadful if the faith of Christians should aim at sundering and separating one man from the others. It is in fact the strongest motive for collecting men and binding them together. And what binds is, quite simply and challengingly, at the same time the commission which the community has to deliver its message. If we consider the matter once more from the standpoint of the community, that is, from the standpoint of those who seriously wish to be Christians – ‘Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief!’* - we must remember that everything will depend upon the Christians not painting for the non-Christians in word and deed a picture of the Lord or an idea of Christ, but on their succeeding with their human words and ideas in pointing to Christ Himself. For it is not the conception of Him, not the dogma of Christ that is the real Lord, but He is is attested to in the word of the Apostles. Be it said to those who account themselves believers: May it be given us not to set up an image, when we speak of Christ, a Christian idol, but in all out weakness point to Him who is the Lord and so, in the power of His Godhead, the sovereign decision upon the existence of every man. 

(Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, pp. 93-94, ugly bold emphasis mine)

* Mark 9:24

Power for power’s sake

The lordship of Jesus Christ is not power for power’s sake. And when the Christian Church confesses that ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord’, then it is not thinking of a blind law standing threateningly over us, not of an historical power, not of a destiny or fate to which man is exposed defenceless, in face of which his final insight could only consist in acknowledging it as such; but it is thinking of the proper lordship of its Lord. [...] Where God is king, man can but fall down and adore. But adore in presence of the wisdom of God, of His righteousness and holiness, of the mystery of His mercy. That is Christian reverence before God and Christian praise of God, Christian service and obedience. 

(Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 90)

The goodness of God is at stake here. God is love, either that, or God is not love but something else. I can’t and won’t provide any theodicy here – Job, much greater than I, was left speechless before God’s answer in power. Barth makes the powerful point that power for power’s sake is satanic. To use the language of someone like Stringfellow, power for power’s sake is demonic, demonic being that which promotes death, setting up principalities and institutions that lead to death. This nihilistic power is, unfortunately one I believe many people are fairly familiar with and understand God to embody.

God is seen as arbitrary by many, including me. What happens, what comes about, whoever wins the battle, whoever has the most money, whoever posts enough heads on stakes outside the camp, whoever lines the road with enough tortured victims on crosses, wins as an act of God’s supposedly good will. Job’s friends were not friends but accusers – each of them explaining that Job’s lot was his own fault, he should have known better and he had better just sit back and relax and enjoy the show until its finish because he bought the tickets and took the seat all on his own. And when some awful act of evil happens, whether a tsunami or a war, it seems to be a matter of time before someone blames God for it, either by cursing the people afflicted as anathema for their sin or by cursing God as an arbitrary torturer.

What I understand Barth to be explaining in the chapter I have excerpted, Our Lord, is that by looking into the face of Christ we see God fully and completely, and he was anything but arbitrary. Jesus accepting power for Power’s sake would negate Lent, the season of repentance symbolic of Christ’s wilderness fast and temptation of all things. Power for power’s sake would have been the Christ eating heartily of the bread he might have been able to make. He might have ridden in on a stallion with captured enemies trailing behind in a victorious march into Jerusalem. A Christ powerful for power’s sake would never have endured death and Hades for all. 

Yet Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, roared like a lamb. He conquered Jerusalem riding on a donkey as a peaceful king, taking no prisoners. He stood by the meek and downtrodden, the oppressed and forgotten, the leper and prostitute, and even his accusers, the Pharisees and Romans. He suffered and died and, to paraphrase Chesterton, took on the demeanor (or truly even, not just the demeanor) of atheism if for a moment – “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” God forsaken of God, Christ as God with us, truly with us in our doubt and disbelief (in the midst of joy and wonder). Christ as truly human, truly all of humanity, defining the limits of “being-human.”

Christ’s existence was not the arbitrary insertion of a man into the process of history, but the existence of a man in whom deity is seen, living always for-us, an existence with a purpose, who “not only exists for Himself but is this One for all” (90). This is why I love the Lutheran theology of God not just being, but being-for-us, which is a picture of power not for power’s sake, but reminding us that Christ’s power is based on God’s mercy, goodness, and love, inviting all to abandon their reservations.

I will drink, and right freely: Having a Pint with Martin Luther

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” -Martin Luther

(H/T: Internet Monk)

Why our materialist mothers kissed our bruised knees

Remember when your mother kissed your knee when you fell and it actually made it feel better? Was that a wives tale, a simple psychosomatic effect, or is there a material explanation for this phenomenon? Researchers say yes: 

”Basically the signals that tell the brain that we are being stroked on the skin have their own direct route to the brain, and are not blocked even if the brain is receiving pain impulses from the same area. In fact it’s more the opposite, that the stroking impulses are able to deaden the pain impulses,” says Line Löken, postgraduate student in neurophysiology at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

(Source)

American Psycho with Zizek: Why kill?

Monologue I: The post-modern (yuppie) subject

“I live in the American Gardens building on West 81st Street on the Eleventh floor. My name is Patrick Bateman. I’m twenty-seven years old. I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous exercise routine. 

“In the morning if my face is a little puffy, I’ll put on an ice-pack while doing my stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now. After I remove the ice pack, I use a deep-pore cleanser lotion. In the shower, I use a water activated gel cleanser. Then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face, an exfoliating gel-scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask, which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out, and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing ‘protective lotion.’

“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.”

Monologue II: The hysteric confession of guilt

“Howard! It’s Bateman, Pat Bateman. You’re my lawyer, so I think you should know I killed a lot of people! Some escort girls in an apartment uptown … some homeless people, maybe 5 or 10! Ummm … some girl I met at an NYU party. I left her body in the parking lot behind some old donut shop! My old girlfriend Beverly with a nail gun. Some man – some old FAGGOT with a dog!

"Hey Paul!"

“I killed another girl with a chainsaw. I had to, she almost got away. There was someone else there – I can’t remember…maybe a model or something. But, she’s dead too. And, uh, Paul Allen! I killed Paul Allen with an axe in the face! His body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hells Kitchen. I don’t want to leave anything out, now. I guess I killed maybe…twenty people. Maybe forty!

“I’ve got tapes of a lot of it. Some of the girls have seen the tapes. I even…I even ate some of their brains. And I tried to cook a little. Tonight … I just HAD TO KILL ALOT OF PEOPLE! And I don’t think I’m gonna get away with it this time. So…I guess…I guess I’m a pretty sick guy. Well … if you get back tomorrow … I’ll meet you up at Harry’s Bar so … keep your eyes open. Bye.”

Monologue III: Guilty of … well, you (should) know!

“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain in constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this there is no catharsis.

“My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”

Postlogue

“[A]ccording to Saint Paul, the Law itself generates the desire to violate it. Along the same lines, in contrast to the Law’s precise prohibitions (”You shall not kill, steal …”), the true superego injunction is just the truncated “You shall not!” – do what? This gap opens up the abyss of the superego: you yourself should know or guess what you should not do, so that you are put in an impossible position of always and a priori being under suspicion of violating some (unknown) prohibition. More precisely, the superego splits every determinate commandment into two complementary, albeit symmetrical, parts – “You shall not kill!,” for instance, is split into the formal-indeterminate “You shall not!” and the obscene direct injunction “Kill!” The silent dialogue which sustains this operation is thus: “You shall not!” “I shall not – what? I have no idea what is being demanded of me! Che vuoi?” “You shall not!” “This is driving me crazy, being under  pressure to do something without knowing what, feeling guilty without knowing of what, so I’ll just explode, and start killing!” Thus killing is the desperate response to the impenetrable abstract superego prohibition.”

(Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf, p. 105)

Solar Power from Space

PG&E is working out a deal with Solaren to purchase 200 MW of solar power from a satellite, which will then be transmitted wirelessly back to Earth. No more worries about cloudy days!

Boredom

It is the fourth week since the completion of my B. S. in Applied Physics. I am still unemployed – my best prospect ended after the third round of interviews when senior management decided they needed someone more experienced for an entry level position. This is something I cannot understand – why list a position as needing little to no experience and then demand that the applicant has more experience than stated? Even on the UC Davis alumni job board there are numerous open positions requiring five years of experience.

I am still getting married in about six weeks or less and there is much unfinished planning. We need a sound system, a meeting with the organist, I need to buy a suit, plan my bachelor party, and the list just continues.

I did manage to finish a couple of decent books but despite this all I feel somewhat unproductive.

Cloud Computing in the STAR experiment

Even STAR can use the Amazon.com model to improve computing efficiency: 

“The benefits of virtualization were clear to us early on,” said Jerome Lauret, software and computing project leader for the STAR experiment. “We can configure the virtual machine image exactly to our needs and have a fully validated experimental software stack ready for use.” The image can then be overlaid on top of remote resources using infrastructure such as Nimbus.

With cloud computing, Lauret said, a 100-node STAR cluster can be online in minutes. In contrast, Grid resources available at sites not expressly dedicated to STAR can take months to configure.

(Source)

Adult stem cells back to embryonic stem cells?

This seems like a particularly good solution to the ethical dilemma regarding the creation of life for the purposes of saving it: 

A team of UCSF researchers has for the first time used tiny molecules called microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body.

(Source)

San Francisco, New York City, France, and Europe

A poll shows that Southerners are more likely to have an unfavorable opinion about these places than anyone else in the nation. (H/T Andrew Sullivan)

 

Easter Brunch with Karl Barth, a Second Helping

The war is at an end – even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them any more. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind – and truly it is burning – but we have to look, not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in Him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear. 

(Dogmatics in Outline, p. 123)